Hot Takes On Film

  A Werewolf Boy ( 2012 South Korea) A family takes in a feral boy who happens to be a Werewolf. Where Wolf? There Wolf. Sorry I couldn’t resist. This is a lovely fantasy teenage romance story NOT in the vein of Twilight. Very different. Technically you could make the argument that it’s SciFi because in the second act they spend about 10 minutes trying to explain why things are the way they are. Mad Scientist by the way. Then they went on with the movie not mentioning it again. I’m told that it’s common in Asian media to do that. Regardless, the explanation was kinda out of place so I choose to ignore it and continue to call it fantasy as Werewolves are solidly in the fantasy camp. Director Jo Sung-Hee made some interesting choices with the photography. They opened up the aperture to over-expose the scene making it look very bright or “hot”. I think they added a blur either in the camera or in post. It looked like the characters were bathed in a heavenly light. Quite lovely really. At

  The Love Witch (2016 US) It’s #FemaleFilmmakerFriday and todays entry is this fantasy from Anna Biller about a witch searching for true love. What I really loved about this is that it feels like it was shot in 1968. Biller really nailed it. I was 10 minutes into the film and I went back to verify that this was actually shot in 2016. Yup! It was. What made the “look” really pop was that it was shot on 35 mm film. Shooting on film is pretty hard. you have to have your poo poo together before you turn on the camera and clearly Biller did. She had a lot to say about the male gaze, fantasy, fear, religion and the Femme Fatale. I could probably write a 10 page film theory paper on this but that would be boring so I will only say it’s there and to watch for it. Although, the film has a lot to say it’s not all ivory tower academic speak. It’s very entertaining. Femme fatales, when done right, are so…dare I say it..Fun. Samantha Robinson really shined as the femme fatale. She is now on my lis

  Willow (1988-US) Ron Howard directs this classic sword and sorcery fantasy film about a young farmer who takes on the task of protecting a baby who was prophesized to destroy the evil queen. I just love this film . I have seen it many, many times. Is it the kind of film that wins awards? Nope! Does anyone really care? Also, nope! It is one of the most satisfying films out there. It’s like Hot Chocolate on a cold winter’s day. Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley make a very dynamic couple. Veteran Actor Warwick Davis is so compelling. It is really well paced. Howard is a master of pacing. He also likes to get the audience invested in characters and then gives them a finished ending. I do believe that is why his films are so addictive. Disney plus did a sequel series which I loved but apparently nobody else did and it was cancelled. Unfortunately, Kilmer was not in it. I would loved to have seen him reprise Madmartigan regardless of his health issues. So Kilmer if you are reading this, “we l

  Welcome to #FantasyJune. For those that have been with me for a bit you will remember that January was #SciFiJanuary. I wrote a bit about what SciFi actually is and essentially the big takeaway was that SciFi and Fantasy are opposite sides of a very similar coin. Whereas SciFi is all about science including the softer sciences. Fantasy is all about magic and what is not explained. What makes a film fantasy or SciFi hinges on what drives the story. Using a computer in a fantasy film does not make it SciFi and talking about religion in a SciFi does not make it fantasy. I submit that these two genres can’t mix. It’s like oil and water. When I see platforms such as Amazon or Netflix classify a film ScFi/Fantasy I get annoyed. It’s one or the other. So here are the subgenres that I will be discussing. Religion This is a tricky one and will ultimately lead to arguments. For many, religion is explained so it’s not magic. For others, just having an element of religion makes it fantasy. Dune

  #MotherMayI. Its May already. This month we will be looking at mother themed films. What I love about themes like this is that it crosses genres a lot. I will focus on films with the mother archetype. It doesnt have to be the main theme just front and center. I love how so many are in the horror genre. What does that say about motherhood? I am terrible in the horror genre space but I will do my best. The archetype is generally bonded with their child, she is female or female identifying but not always. She makes decisions for her child but not always good ones. This is where the archetype can go really wrong. She is nurturing and trusted but that can go wrong too. We are drawn to this archetypes even as fully realized adults. We still need to see her. Here is a brief list of genres that I have seen this theme Horror SciFi Drama Comedy Thriller Animation Fantasy Even Noir Yeah that’s a lot I know. What’s funny is that sometimes, not all, we don’t even realize we are looking at a mothe

Treasure Planet (2002 US) Obviously based on the Robert Lewis Stevenson novel Treasure Island. Disney brings to life (sort of) this adventure story about finding hidden treasure in space. I really feel like this film is one of Disney's underappreciated animated films. I'm a space opera fan and its hard to find stories in that genre that haven't been so "done". Don't get me wrong I like franchises like Star trek and Stargate but its fun to find a new story. This is your standard Disney fare so don't expect something that is groundbreaking. Except it has a steampunk vibe to it. It's not steampunk but there are a few similarities. Disney was not big on taking risks back then. Michael "stay the course" Eisner was CEO at the time. He was all about satisfying stories. Bob "if it aint broke" Iger was president so between the two output was pretty standard. Having said that it's just fun to watch. Joseph Gordon-Levitt leads an all-star

Alita: Battle Angel (2019 US) Based on the Manga Gunnm by  Yukito Kishiro . A cyborg in the future enters a brutal game to fight corruption. To be clear Manga is not for everyone. Rotten Tomatoes has this at 63%. However, clearly people liked it because it made bank at the box office. James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis and Kishiro teamed up on the screenplay with action director Robert Rodriguez directing. It runs like a Manga: good news for Manga fans and not so good news for people who really don't get it. What I liked about it is the mixing of animation styles with live action: CGI and motion capture. The True Detective Mahershala Ali plays the baddie in this and as usual kills it. I don't know why I thought he had passed and was pleased when I looked and discovered that he had not. Sorry Ali, you look great. Long story short; if you like Manga you will like this. If you don't you won't. Find it on Hulu and for rent on most streaming.   

 9 (2009 US) from producer Tim Burton comes this post apocalyptical animated feature about a rag-doll/robot who awakens to find that humanity is gone. 9 and his buddies try to figure out the mystery. I watched this with my the 9 year old daughter. I figured hey its a cartoon. It will be fine for kiddos. Nope. She hated it and said it was too scary. Years later she is still Salty about that. I will likely be paying for therapy because of this film. However, if you're not 9 years old you will likely enjoy this. The animation is CGI but it really has a stop motion vibe. The production design is dark, you know being post-apocalyptic and all. I'm not a big fan of post op and I talk about why in my scifi tab https://tinyurl.com/4zs3x6au. But a little bit of the right stuff doesnt hurt. Moderation is key. The story is dark as well. Yeah to be expected. It has a deep bench  (lots of talent). Critics hated it; 58% on Rotten Tomatoes. I think that's a bit low. Say what you will its d

  Mad Max Fury Road (2015 AU) George Miller adds another chapter into the Mad Max franchise in this high octane post apocolyptic action film. Charlize Theron stars as a woman escaping from a tyrannical warlord to find her own home. I'm not a fan of post-op films, or many action films or Mad Max for that matter so I was not inclined to go see it. I did watch it one day because I was bored and it was on streaming. See my sci-fi page for why I don't feature post-op films, https://hottakesonfilm.blogspot.com/p/science-fiction-sub-genres.html.  I take issue with the overuse of action in action films. I think it actually slows the pace. I once clocked 20 minutes of a running chase scene with nothing added to the story. In a 90 plus minute film, that's a lot of dead space. When I run into that I usually go get snacks or answer emails or something else because literally nothing happens. I was not fond of the 80's Mad Max. So needless to say when I watched this I was pleasantly

 Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979 US, Klingon) Google has the language for this film as English and Klingon. That's how much Star Trek is part of our society. I am loving being able to talk about this first film in the franchise in context of the 1980 Oscars. Not my favorite Star Trek product but it is still Star Trek and I will watch it. After TOS went off the air in 1969 there was quite a movement of people missing the series. Hence the ST conventions were born. Paramount caught wind of this and decided to make a movie. They hired the insanely talented Robert Wise to direct (Westside Story, Andromeda Strain, The Day the Earth Stood Still) Wise was a once in a generation director with a strong SciFi background. Yay! This is gonna be great! The story was by veteran SciFi writer Alan Dean Foster. Double great! Script by newbie Harold Livingston with very little on his resume much less SciFi. Ooooh ummm. Decades later its pretty clear that it didn't hit the mark. I do think th

 Oscars 95. Well now that its over lets check in with how it went. I know I have been critical of the Academy but that's only because I love it. Tough Love.  My issue with them is they have tended to play to a very narrow subset of population making them feel obsolete.  They have made a lot of changes in the recent years so lets see how they did. First I want to congratulate the producers for having a smooth show and nobody got b*tch slapped or any other unexpected weird thing. In a way I'm kinda disappointed. It did make it interesting. Congrats on the appearance of Cocaine Bear BTW.  Lets dig into who won.  Sound. Sound is very hard and tends to be an afterthought of filmmakers who like to focus exclusively on visuals. Top Gun Maverick won. something about the jet sounds. I haven't seen it so I cant comment. But that sounds about right.  Production Design. All Quiet on the Western Front won that. Yeah that probably was very difficult to pull off. Can you imagine being a s

 Dune (2021 US) Adapted from the Frank Herbert novel of the same name. I have always found the 80's David Lynch version to be one of my most disliked films ever and I'm a Sci-Fi fan. So needless to say I, like many other people, was very skeptical of this Dennis Villenueava version. There is a lot going on and I totally think it was the right call to split the adaptation of the book into two films. Although many of the book purists had a lot to say, this film turned out pretty good. Its such a difficult story to tell and be faithful to Herbert's vision. I would consider it the "White Whale" of filmmaking: divisive as heck between the book purist and audience goers. So many opinions about it. So hard to please everyone.. Not sure you need mine so how about a reminder that part two is scheduled for release this year.  Although, it didn't get a lot of attention at last years Oscars it did get recognized. Dune won in the Production Design, Sound and Effects catego

  It came from Beneath the Sea (1955 US). Like I said earlier I’m a big Ray Harryhausen fan. I just love stop motion. So much so that I made a short film stop motion. This film is all about the # Kaiju and Harryhausen’s work and tbh there isn’t much else going for it. Harryhausen was just so good at what he did that it was enough to carry a film and propel it into legendary status. There is a theory floating about that his work resonates so much now because it was painstakingly hand crafted and not computerized. Yeah there were flaws but it was human flaws. Harryhausen talked about creating this beast. It only had six appendages instead of eight because eight was just too much to animate. He was doing the work one day and got a phone call. When he returned he forgot where he was and had to start all over again. Nowadays there is tech to help the animator but even then that happened to me several times. I stopped answering my phone. I have the Harryhausen box set which is awesome but y

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022 US) I know I posted this back in January but since its nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars I thought I would Comment on it some more. I am team Everywhere and here is why you should be too. I think the Academy has/d the best of intentions to elevate the best work. In reality that is not working out that way. To get a nomination a film producer has to expend a great deal of energy and money courting Academy voters with ads, mailers, billboards etc. Part of that includes in person, over a fancy meal, pitch sessions. There is an awful lot wrong with that and much that could and does lead to corruption. Getting even a nomination for your work whether it be Producer/writer or data wrangler increases your value by a lot. So when a rep sits down with a voter there is money on the table. Filmmakers have now been creating the "Oscar" film. A sort of signal to the Academy that they are open for biz. I think the "Oscar" film should

 reposted from SciFi January 01-02-23  Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022 US) Michelle Yeoh was perfectly happy doing laundry until Short Round showed up and made her do Kung Fu. There is a reason why Harvey Weinstein never bothered her. The man is not stupid. This is the film Dr. strange and the multiverse should have been. Yeoh stars as an Asian immigrant mother who was not having an existential crisis but certainly was later. With one day left, production shut down in 2020 because of Covid. So the movie should have been out sooner. At the movies core is surrealism, which makes sense when dealing with concepts of theoretical physics and a global pandemic. Behind the butt plugs (Yeoh didn’t know what they were) and sausage fingers is a deeply philosophical film that leaves you scratching your head but quite hopeful about your place in the multiverse. Although, you may be sitting with these concepts in the back of your mind for a few months. It’s a hard sci-fi film but I really sh

Her (2013) A lonely man falls in love with his AI assistant. This Sci Fi Romance explores AI as part of our lives and our attachments to them. There have been quite a few that explore AI embedded in a robotic body. This is one of a few that explore just the voice AI and all that entails. The production Design and color although subtle was beautiful. Her was nominated for several Oscars and is very well done and has some things to say especially with regards to their (AI) place on our world. I really enjoyed this one. Find it for rent on most streaming. Please Like Share and Subscribe  

M3ghan (2023 US) I wanted to do this last month for SciFi January but didn't have time to get to the theaters. But Peacock now has the R rated version so Hurrah for not leaving the house. A new guardian of an orphaned 9 year old girl creates a robot AI doll for the girl to "play" with. Things don't go well. Some movies have unfortunate timing when it comes to releasing the film and world events can interfere with how much audiences will want to see it. This one had perfect timing. With the AI Bing chat box going bonkers AI is all people can talk about. I just love how Gemma, the engineer who designed M3ghan, shrugged her shoulders when colleagues brought up moral, philosophical and ethical questions about releasing this tech into the world. That would never happen in the real world. I didn't believe it. It took me right out of the film. Personally, I insisted that my daughter, the star chemistry major in college, take a philosophy class. Mother what are you on abo